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Microsoft Considers Pulling Out of China
icefaerie writes to let us know that a senior executive for Microsoft has said the firm could pull out of non-democratic countries such as China. From the article: "Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China. 'Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,' he told a conference in Athens."
s/non-democratic countries/countries where piracy is rampant/
When Microsoft leads the way in business ethics ahead of a company with a motto of "Don't be evil", I know it's time ot look for aerial pork.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Microsoft, when will you learn? Pulling out is NOT a reliable precaution. It's almost as bad as counting business cycles.
Everyone who thinks this won't happen, mod me up.
Thank you.
Will code a sig generator for food
They are just looking for some leverage to influence China to update its anti piracy laws.
I'm usually on the other side defending MS, but this is clearly just a PR stunt. No company, including the slashdotter's holy Google & Apple, would pass up the chance to get at $1billion+ people. The chinese economy is just begining to ramp up, and they LOVE technology and the internet.
I suspect they are just trying to get some good press...
"Your Honor, my client Microsoft seeks to cancel these contracts because we object to China's
- lying
- unfair practices
- unprincipled use of its economic potential
- painfully slow turnaround time for patching bugs
Sorry, Your Honour... We can strike that last one from the record."
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
NOOO--, I mean, I don't think that's a good idea. Don't you remember how Canada was an entry point for the 9/11 terrorists? We-- I mean, those Canucks can't be trusted. Microsoft should not move here!
I mean, "there"!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
This could mean so many things really.
First of all there is the crazy piracy which costs them huge dollars and causes trouble since the pirated windows spread virii like crazy. Also there so much trouble enforcing contracts. When I was running my IT business people would constantly try to renegotiate the price AFTER the project was completed. A not small amount of time people would just not be able to pay. Forgot about taking them to court.
Then legally you can't really know if you are breaking the law or not half the time. Usually if you are breaking the law come down to who you know. So it's hard for them to make project plans and then suddenly the gov't tells them they can't do something (after they spent millions).
I know a guy working on a TV movie in China. They wrote this super tame script and had it checked by the gov't censor board. Then after spending several million dollars and months of effort the gov't decided they couldn't sell the movie, because it showed foreigners beating out local Chinese people. So this makes it hard to commit the big bucks in China, you get nervous that the gov't will suddenly make some arbitrary change and put you out of business.
Yeah, it's sort of like this here in the US (and lately our gov't been closing the gap) but it's much much worse in China. Or maybe the foriegners all get the 'special' treatment, who knows? At least that is my experience, and I lived in China (all over) for a couple of years, and I have western friends there living in china as long as 12 years.
So there might not be totally humanitarian reasons for this, although there certainly could be really bad stuff here that even MS doesn't want to be associated with.
Peace, or Not?
China will never take over the world.
It's only really used by the upper class or people who'd like to think they're upper class. Most people just use the regular material that plates and cups are made out of (whatever that it). Some even use paper to avoid having to wash up at the end of their meal.
Summation 2
I vote that all US companies move out of any countries that hold prisioners for an indefinite period without a right to a fair trial, practice torture and/or bug their citizens phones without court orders .... oh wait...
If they say they will pull out, it is more that they are going to put pressure on the Chinese (and other governments) to crack down on piracy. If the governments think that they will be unable to easily get what they want from Microsoft, maybe they will crack down on the pirates.
Personally I hope it backfires and China ends up with 100,000,000 computers running Linux. I wonder how that would affect the perceived "market share" held by Microsoft. And think of all the applications that would be made available on Linux. Sweet!